BATON ROUGE - Unsolved murders remain a problem in East Baton Rouge Parish as 2015 draws to a close, the District Attorney says there have been about 75 murders this year.

About half remain unsolved, according to BRPD and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office.

One of those yet to be cracked cases includes Brittany Mills and her baby who were killed outside her apartment in April. It's a situation her family is still suffering from as they hope to see justice served one day.

"Is she watching over us? Is she thinking about us? You know does she miss us? Those are the things I think about," said Tia Mills as she reflects back on times with her sister.

Like Brittany's case, there are a number of homicide cases that are still unsolved.

The Baton Rouge Police Department said the clearance rate is lower this year because of the large number of triple and double murders that have occurred in 2015.

"The beginning of the year, January to June was really slow, which was really a good thing. More so than any of the two years prior since we started the group violence reduction program," said East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore.

Moore said when school let out in June, there was an explosion in violent activity.

"From June to October, we had like 40 something murders. We had three triple murders and seven double murders, which really just spiked the numbers," said Moore.

Although each murder case is different, Tia Mills said something as simple like gaining the access code to her sister's cell phone has been a major challenge in solving her sister's murder. A federal privacy law passed back in 2014 allows Apple to deny access to someone's personal phone code blocking law enforcement agencies from using people's phones to solve cases.

"What is it going to take for them to finally change things and allow the authorities to do what they need to do to solve these cases? Because Brittany's case may not ever get solved but it could certainly help someone else's," said Tia Mills.

The District Attorney said phone encryption is a huge problem, not just locally, but across the country. Mills said she encourages smartphone users to give their access code to someone they trust just in case of an emergency situation like the one that is now a fixture in her deceased sister's case. 

District Attorney contrasted the current year with 2012, in which there were about 84 murders.

Anyone with information related to the crime or others are urged to contact the BRPD Violent Crimes Unit at (225) 389-4869.